Iris.

You know those enormous, beautiful bubbles made with a long rope that are so huge you can cover a whole person with one?
Sometimes I want to wrap Iris up in one.  Just pull it up from around her feet and over her head so she can be distracted with how awesome it is.  Maybe even, like in a cartoon, she can just float inside one and sail around all buoyant and happy and free inside a giant bubble.
But the bubble I would make for her wouldn't be fragile like a soap bubble.  Hers would be like a shield.  A shield only penetrable by kind things, happy things, brilliant things.  Things that would hug her and see how special she is.

I am afraid of how absorbent my daughter is.  She takes it all in and misses very little.  I am afraid mostly because I don't know yet how she internalizes things and processes them.

I hope when she goes to school, she makes friends with kids who can sail around in the bubble with her.

(I am so scared of how I am going to feel when she's in middle school.)

I want to teach my daughter how to evolve into her own individual, and not to adapt to what someone else already is.